wim vonk en klaas de jonge
The maskman and the organgrinder.
Wim Vonk en Klaas de Jonge in Zaal 100
Wim Vonk teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He received his own education also at the Rietveld, where he studied painting and drawing. He prolonged his studies at the Grafik Skolan Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna in Stockholm. In his current work he assembles objects trouvés and tidbits, recreating these into installations. many of them able of motion and productive of sound. Over the past two years he has incorporated into his installations African sculptures and masks from the collection of Klaas de Jonge. De Jonge studied anthropology and sociology in Amsterdam and Paris, was a human rights activist in the 80’s against Apartheid in South Africa and produced global attention by being arrested and by his refuge into the Dutch Ambassey in Pretoria, where he stayed in exile for almost 2 years.
He worked in Tanzania, Senegal, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, where he started to collect African Art as diversion from his work as a researcher promoting the reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis. Working with endless numbers of murderers and victims, he took hundreds of interviews. De Jonge: “ You don’t shake that off easily”. Looking at art was a way of looking at things from an esthetic point of view. Sculptures and masks had a great therapeutic value to him. To see them, touch them, to hear the stories surrounding them and to enter the social contacts they afforded, gave him great joy. ”It is not static art. In Africa art is a complete event. For example sculptures get a different meaning when you know they are also used in different rituals and the stories that go along with it. In that way there is a deepening of knowledge. These sculptures belong to ceremonies and that is also what Wim is doing”. Wim creates his own ceremonies. He combines traditional and contemporary art and in a way that makes them part of a bigger picture. And he uses these elements with respect, always looking how they can fit together. It is a beautiful way to create. I just offer the supplies, I am the spectator. He is the artist. Wim Vonk: “for me Klaas is the inspiration, the way his beliefs and his actions agree, and the way he shares his collection is a very good example of that”. Wim Vonk puts a pipe in the mouth of a mask, but the pipe is no pipe but a big white ceramic head of an old telephone-post. He creates nooks by putting together crates and boxes. In these he integrates collage and painting with sculptures attached: standing, hanging or tied up.
His ‘Island of Africa’ is an installation composed of groups of sculptures on an old wooden workbench. From beneath, a ventilator mounted with a brush lightly strokes guitar strings and also a drum. On top a revolving electrical appliance is placed fitted with objects of western origin and all kinds of wire.
They are dragged along the floor, dangling, clanging, scraping and bumping against each other, thus circling the island with color, form, sound and movement. “I am working in different layers of cultural heritage, thus I combine the masks and sculptures with my own work not so much from an esthetical point of view, but more like a painter, choosing them on their colour, texture or even how they are repaired.” Wim Vonk plays with contexts and in that way he creates a new reality, that also replaces boundaries of the culture of exhibiting ethnological art. Don’t miss this statement! On 18 March 20.30 hrs. The Mask man and the Organ grinder will perform. Wim Vonk has especially designed a chair, as a media center in order to contact Klaas de Jonge, who at that time will be in Burundi.march 2010 by Aja Waalwijk
